Google has joined the growing list of online services that are registering very short .co domains to use as short URLs. Others you may already know about include Twitter and Amazon which have T.co, A.co, Z.co, and K.co respectively. Google has predictably chosen G.co for itself, but isn’t revealing how much it paid for the super short domain.

The advantage to owning such a URL is all down to how short you can make your service links. Also, it allows a company to guarantee the security of a link as only they will be able to use that URL. So any short URL beginning G.co will only ever lead to a Google-owned web page. The search giant has already confirmed this domain will never be opened up to allow anyone else to shorten their URLs.

Google also doesn’t want us to forget about that other short URL they started using in 2009: goo.gl. It will continue to be used and allow anyone to create a short URL. It seems Google just wanted to go even shorter and use something a bit more personal just for its own services.

Google hasn’t made it clear yet exactly how it intends to format the new short URL for its different services, but it may just hide the destination completely. For example, this YouTube link:

Whatever the final decision on the rules governing its use on a per service basis, the only important thing for end users to know is this won’t be a short URL that leads to a malware trap like those that can appear on other public short URL services, or even the fake ones setup specifically to help spread spam.